Packaged articles are retained in wrap-around carriers by tightly drawing the wrap about the articles and restraining the upper and lower portions of the articles against movement toward the open ends of the carrier. In the case of bottles, the upper portions are restrained by extending the bottle necks through openings in the top panel of the carrier or by cutouts in the upper part of the side panels through which the outer edge of the bottle crown extends. The lower portions are restrained by heel cutouts through which the bottle heels extend out beyond the side panels. Despite these provisions, if the heel cutout should tear or the wrapper is loose the end bottles could fall out while the package is being carried. It is desirable, therefore, to provide even greater restriction to bottle movement, especially in wrap-around carriers used for packaging relatively large bottles or bottles whose bottom portions are not of a constant diameter.
Approaches to further restrict bottle movement in a wrap-around carrier have generally resulted in the use of extra retainer structure at the ends of the carrier, which is economically undesirable because of the added paperboard this requires. Also, the provision of other structure with article retainer capabilities has typically made it more difficult to continuously run the carrier through a packaging machine at high speeds.
A main object of this invention, therefore, is to provide a wrap-around carrier having improved article retainer means which does not add to the amount of paperboard required in the wrap-around blank and does not prevent a rapid and efficient flow of the articles through the packaging machine.